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Biological Naturalism and The Mind Body Problem 1St Ed 2022 Edition Jane Anderson Full Chapter
Biological Naturalism and The Mind Body Problem 1St Ed 2022 Edition Jane Anderson Full Chapter
Biological Naturalism and The Mind Body Problem 1St Ed 2022 Edition Jane Anderson Full Chapter
Jane Anderson
Biological Naturalism and the Mind-Body
Problem
Jane Anderson
Biological Naturalism
and the Mind-Body
Problem
Jane Anderson
Department of Philosophy
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, South Africa
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
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Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
References 10
2 T
he Explanatory Gap 11
2.1 Introduction: The Explanatory Gap and What-it-is-like 11
2.2 Dualism, Materialism, and the Explanatory Gap 13
2.2.1 The Explanatory Gap and (Cartesian) Dualism 14
2.2.1.1 Bodies 15
2.2.1.2 Minds 17
2.2.1.3 Properties and Substances 19
2.2.1.4 The Lesson (of ‘The Explanatory Gap
and Cartesian Dualism’) for Philosophy 20
2.2.2 The Explanatory Gap and Materialism 21
2.2.2.1 Reductive Materialism 22
2.2.2.2 Non-reductive Materialism 23
2.2.2.3 Awareness of Mental States 24
2.2.2.4 The Lesson (of ‘The Explanatory Gap
and Materialism’) for Philosophy 25
2.2.3 Dualism, Materialism, and the Explanatory Gap:
Conclusion 26
v
vi Contents
3 The
Hard and the Easy Problems of Consciousness 61
3.1 Introduction: Investigating ‘The Easy Problems’ 62
3.2 The Easy Problems of Perception and Cognition 65
3.2.1 Blindsight 66
3.2.1.1 Patient TN 67
3.2.1.2 HOT Theory 68
3.2.1.3 Dual Streams Theory 70
3.2.1.4 The Lesson (of ‘Blindsight’) for
Philosophy 72
3.2.2 Priming 73
3.2.2.1 The Lexical-Decision Task 74
3.2.2.2 Semantic Resemblance 75
3.2.2.3 The Lesson (of ‘Priming’) for
Philosophy 76
3.2.3 Introspective Access to Cognitive Processes 77
3.2.3.1 Telling More than We Can Know:
Verbal Reports on Mental Processes
(Nisbett and Wilson 1977) 77
3.2.3.2 Unconscious Influences on Decision-
Making: A Critical Review (Newell
and Shanks 2014) 80
3.2.3.3 The Lesson (of ‘Introspective Access to
Cognitive Processes’) for Philosophy 82
3.2.4 The Easy Problems of Perception and Cognition:
Conclusion 83
3.3 The Hard Problem of What-it-is-like/experience 84
3.3.1 What-It-Is-Like in Philosophy of Mind 85
3.3.1.1 Chalmers 85
3.3.1.2 Churchland 86
3.3.1.3 Searle 86
3.3.1.4 Ryle/Tanney 87
3.3.1.5 The Lesson (of ‘What-It-Is-Like in
Philosophy of Mind’) for Philosophy 88
viii Contents
4 (Un)Consciousness
and (Ir)Rationality in Psychology101
4.1 Introduction: Radical Behaviorism 102
4.2 (Psychological) What-it-is-like/experience and
(Introspective) Consciousness 105
4.2.1 Sigmund Freud 106
4.2.1.1 An Outline of Psycho-Analysis 109
4.2.1.2 Science and Psychoanalysis 111
4.2.1.3 Motivating a Psychology of the
Unconscious116
4.2.1.4 The Lesson (of ‘Sigmund Freud’) for
Philosophy119
4.2.2 Psychoanalytic Techniques 119
4.2.2.1 Hypnosis 119
4.2.2.2 Repression and Free Association 123
4.2.2.3 Dream Analysis 125
4.2.2.4 The Lesson (of ‘Psychoanalytic
Techniques’) for Philosophy 132
4.2.3 (Psychological) What-It-Is-Like/Experience and
(Introspective) Consciousness: Conclusion 133
4.3 (Psychological) What-it-is-like/experience and Rationality 137
4.3.1 Accounting for Irrationality 138
4.3.1.1 The Psychodynamic Account of
Irrationality140
4.3.1.2 The Structures of the Mind 143
Contents ix
5 The
Brain and the Mind-body-self165
5.1 Introduction: The Cerebral Cortex 166
5.1.1 Historical Views 169
5.1.1.1 Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-
Century Views 169
5.1.1.2 Twenty-First-Century Views 171
5.2 The Cerebral Cortex and Consciousness 174
5.2.1 ‘Consciousness’ in Hydranencephaly 175
5.2.1.1 Shewmon et al.’s Cases 176
5.2.1.2 Merker’s Cases 180
5.2.1.3 The Lesson (of ‘Consciousness in
Hydranencephaly’) for Philosophy 182
5.2.2 Solms on Types of Consciousness, the Structure
of the Brain, and the Structures of the Mind 183
5.2.2.1 The Structure of the Brain vs Types of
Consciousness185
5.2.2.2 The Essential Nature of Consciousness 187
5.2.2.3 Types of Consciousness vs the
Structures of the Mind 189
x Contents
6 Twenty-first-century
Biological Naturalism: The Body-
Map-Based View and the Affect-Centric View215
6.1 Introduction: The Fall of Behaviorism 215
6.1.1 Useful Definitions 217
6.1.1.1 Consciousness, Mind and Self 218
6.1.1.2 Emotions, Feelings, and Affects 220
6.2 Antonio Damasio: A ‘Body-Map-Based’ View of Human
Consciousness and Human Reason 223
6.2.1 The Central Topics 224
Contents xi
7 F
inal Thoughts283
7.1 The Explanatory Gap 283
7.2 The Hard and the Easy Problems of Consciousness 285
7.3 (Un)consciousness, (Ir)rationality, and Psychological
Experience285
7.4 The Brain and the Mind-body-self 286
7.5 Twenty-First-Century Biological Naturalism: The
Body-Map-Based View and the Affect-Centric View 286
7.6 Dualism, Biological Naturalism, and dissolving the
Explanatory Gap 288
I ndex293
1
Introduction
‘cerebral excitation,’ but “we do not even have a clear idea of how the
brain could work to cause consciousness” (Searle 1997: 201). More than
fifty years after Sperry, Antonio Damasio wrote that “it would be foolish
to presume definitive answers” to questions like “how does the brain con-
struct a mind?” and “how does the brain make that mind conscious?”
(2010, chpt. 1, sect. 1, para. 1). It is no longer the case that we have very
little understanding of the brain and its workings (or at least, we under-
stand it much better now than Sperry did in 1952)—but none of our
knowledge about the brain seems to get us any closer to understanding
‘how the brain constructs a mind.’
But before we have any hope of being able to answer a certain ques-
tion, we need to be sure that we are asking the correct question. That is
why a large part of this book is devoted to interrogating different ways of
approaching ‘the mind-body problem,’ and showing why they are unsat-
isfactory. Towards the end, I will give some slightly more definite sugges-
tions about what I consider to be the correct way to set about making
sense of the problem—but at no point will I suggest that I have ‘solved’
the problem.
‘The mind-body problem’ is also sometimes referred to as the problem
of ‘the explanatory gap’ between mind and body. That is what Chap. 2 is
about. In Sect. 2.2, I examine the two main metaphysical frameworks
within which people have tried to make sense of the explanatory gap:
dualism and monism. Strictly speaking, monist positions can be either
materialist or idealist, but idealism is hardly ever taken seriously in our
current intellectual climate—so to all intents and purposes, the two can-
didates are dualism and materialism. Seeing that these two positions are
usually taken to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, it is very
difficult for most philosophers to conceive of a world which neither is
dualist nor materialist—but that is exactly what I claim in this section:
both dualism and materialism are deeply problematic, and we should
reject them both. If neither dualism nor materialism enables us to account
for ‘the mind’ (or ‘thinking’ or ‘consciousness’) in physical terms, and if
these two positions are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, then it
follows, I argue, that it is not possible to produce a coherent metaphysical
account of the explanatory gap.
1 Introduction 3
about ‘the explanatory gap’ between ‘the mind’ and ‘the body,’ we should
use a biological naturalist framework—something along the lines of the
affect-centric view—to enable us to understand the mind-body-self.
Philosophers are not normally familiar with the psychological or bio-
logical empirical considerations constraining a theoretical framework for
understanding the mind-body-self; psychologists are not normally con-
cerned with either the biological considerations constraining, or the phil-
osophical significance of, their empirical (psychological) findings; and
biological researchers are not normally concerned either with the psycho-
logical or the broader philosophical implications of their empirical (bio-
logical) findings. Even more to the point, many researchers of all these
varieties are not familiar with Freud. Of the writers whose work I exam-
ine in this book, Panksepp comes the closest to appreciating all these
important matters—he is very knowledgeable about psychology (includ-
ing Freud) and biology, and he even has some insightful things to say
about philosophical concerns such as dualism in the neurosciences—but
he does not have the necessary background to say anything much about
how any of this should inform a philosophical understanding of the
mind-body-self. In fact, there are very few writers who have the necessary
expertise to draw the connections among all these areas. This is what I
take to be both important and original about my project: the integration
of all these lines of enquiry in the pursuit of a comprehensive new mind-
body-self paradigm.
Notes
1. This introductory paragraph is reproduced in my article ‘Damasio’s body-
map- based view, Panksepp’s affect-centric view, and the evolutionary
advantages of consciousness’ (Anderson 2019: 419).
2. Portions of this chapter are also published in Anderson (2019).
10 J. Anderson
References
Anderson, J. 2019. Damasio’s body-map-based view, Panksepp’s affect-centric
view, and the evolutionary advantages of consciousness. South African Journal
of Philosophy 38 (4): 419–432. https://doi.org/10.1080/0258013
6.2019.1697569.
Chalmers, D.J. 1995. Facing up to the problem of consciousness. http://consc.
net/papers/facing.pdf. Accessed 23 March 2015. [Also/published in Journal
of Consciousness Studies 2(3): 200–219)].
Damasio, A. 2010. Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain. New York:
Pantheon books.
Freud--Complete Works, Ivan Smith. 2000, 2007, 2010. https://www.valas.fr/
IMG/pdf/Freud_Complete_Works.pdf. Accessed 20 September 2015.
Levine, M.P. 2000. Introduction: How right does psychoanalysis have to be? In
The analytic Freud: Philosophy and psychoanalysis, ed. Michael Levine, 1–7.
London: Routledge.
Panksepp, J. 1998. Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal
emotions. ProQuest Ebook Central database: https://0-ebookcentral-proquest-
com.ujlink.uj.ac.za/lib/ujlink-ebooks/detail.action?docID=431176#.
Papineau, D. 2011. What exactly is the explanatory gap? Philosophia 39: 5–19.
Searle, J.R. 1997. The mystery of consciousness. 7th ed. New York: NYREV.
Talvitie, V. 2015. Beyond the philosophy of the (unconscious) mind: The
Freudian cornerstone as scientific theory, a cult, and a way of talking. In
Psychoanalysis & Philosophy of Mind: Unconscious Mentality in the 21st Century,
ed. S. Boag, L.A.W. Brakel, and V. Talvitie, 163–192. ProQuest Ebook
Central database: https://0-ebookcentral-proquest-com.ujlink.uj.ac.za/lib/
ujlink-ebooks/detail.action?docID=2082961&query=psychoanalysis+and+p
hilosophy+of+mind. Accessed 10 September 2019.
2
The Explanatory Gap
In his 1983 article, Joseph Levine coined the phrase ‘the explanatory
gap’ to refer to the idea that “we don’t have any way of determining
exactly which psycho-physical identity statements are true”—that is to
say, there appears to be an unbridgeable ‘gap’ between psychological or
mental phenomena, and physical phenomena. We can explain psycho-
logical phenomena; we can explain physical phenomena; but we cannot
explain how some psychological phenomena and some physical phenom-
ena are connected. Even if we are told (and even if we truly believe) that
‘the mind’ is identical to ‘the brain,’ describing brain processes seems to
be inescapably different from describing ‘mental’ processes. For instance:
we may be told that when we feel pain, what is really going on is that the
C-fibres in our brains are firing. But knowing about what your C-fibres
are doing will not be enough to tell you what that pain actually feels like
(Papineau 2011: 6). The concept pain, in our language, has nothing to do
with the physical processes that may or may not give rise to pain feelings:
it refers to what it is like to experience the pain. Michael Tye says “[i]n the
case of phenomenal consciousness …we can still coherently ask why so-
and-so brain processes or functional states feel the way pains do or why
these processes feel any way at all” (1999: 706).
Thomas Nagel famously proposed that when an organism is having a
subjective (phenomenal) experience, “there is something it is like to be
that organism” (1974: 436); and I am going to follow Chalmers’ lead in
taking Nagel’s kind of phenomenal experience (‘what-it-is-like’) as the
crux of the mind-body problem. Nagel thought that “the problem of
conscious experience is what makes the mind-body problem both inter-
esting and intractable” (Montemayor and Haladjian 2015: 7)—and this
problem of conscious experience (that is, ‘the mind-body problem’ and/
or ‘the problem of the explanatory gap’) is what we are no closer to under-
standing, even today.
In Sect. 2.2, I examine the two main metaphysical frameworks within
which people have tried to make sense of the explanatory gap between
‘the mind’ and ‘the body’: dualism and materialism. Our unquestioning
acceptance of the assumption that either dualism is false and materialism
is true, or that materialism is false and dualism is true (that is, that these
positions are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive), infuses all our
thinking about the explanatory gap; but I will argue that both dualism
2 The Explanatory Gap 13
Cartesian dualism is the view that ‘the mind’ is some kind of non-physical
substance, related in some unspecified way to ‘the physical body,’ from
which it is different in principle—as opposed to different only in detail.
Whereas the essential property of matter is that is ‘extended’ in space, the
essential property of the mind is that it thinks. Cartesian ideas “domi-
nated the scientific and philosophical thinking of Europe” for a consider-
able time, owing to the clarity and precision with which these ideas were
expressed; as well as the “remarkably wide range” (Cottingham 1996:
xxxvii) of topics about which Descartes was knowledgeable. Because his
views have been so influential, in a sense, my whole investigation of the
‘explanatory gap’ could be said to be devoted to interrogating the linger-
ing influence of Descartes’ view.
2 The Explanatory Gap 15
2.2.1.1 Bodies
in Descartes’ time, and I may say for 150 years afterwards, the best physi-
ologists had not reached that point. It remained … a question whether the
passions were or were not located in the abdominal viscera. (Huxley
1874: 362)
2 The Explanatory Gap 17
However, what is also completely clear is that even if, on the Cartesian
view, some parts of ‘the body’ have some kind of power to influence ‘the
mind,’ mind and body are comfortably distinct from each other. They are
different not only in detail, but also different in principle. Because he
believed that thinking/consciousness was different in principle from
physical structures, Descartes’ view did not enable him to make sense of
the explanatory gap—and neither, I will claim [Sect. 2.2.1.3], do more
modern versions of dualism.
2.2.1.2 Minds
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